The Call for Papers from the ICA Divisions and Interest Groups for Communication Beyond Boundaries, the 69th Annual Conference to be held in Washington, DC from 24-28 May 2018, is about to go out. Those who have submitted to ICA conferences previously will notice one important change, which is that we are now setting word limits rather than page limits for individual papers.

The ScholarOne system for paper submission has now been adopted by the ICA, replacing the older AllAcademic system. Many of you will be familiar with ScholarOne, particularly if you have submitted papers to journals published by Oxford University Press or Taylor & Francis. ScholarOne has additional layers of functionality that make the page limit system redundant:

You can set a maximum word limit, and the system will not accept papers that exceed that limit. We have recommended a maximum length of 8,000 words to Divisions and Interest Groups;

Tables, charts, figures, images and graphs can be submitted as separate files;

The experience of using ScholarOne is more akin to that which researchers today are familiar with. As journals work with word limits rather than page limits, and as the maximum page limit system was always fraught with ambiguities, we believe that there will be a better experience for participants, reviewers and those managing the submission, reviewing and decision-making processes from the use of this new system.

You should also be aware that the 2019 conference will commence on Friday 24 May. This differs from previous practice, when the conference has commenced on a Thursday evening. The conference will conclude on Tuesday 28 May, which is also a change from the previous final day being Monday (the Memorial Day Holiday in the US). All other events within the conference will also shift back by one day.

Please note that the room blocks at the Washington Hilton, the nearby Omni Hotel, and any overflow hotels, will not be released until the next BUSINESS day AFTER the conference schedule is released. This is a change from previous years, when it was released on the announcement of paper acceptance. This change has been undertaken in order to address what was a large problem of room wastage i.e. up to 50% of bookings not going ahead once the conference schedule was announced. Attendees will now be able to book rooms with a clear understanding of the days they are required to attend as presenters.

Key dates for the ICA 2019 conference

Friday, 15 January: acceptance/rejection letters go out (you may wish to book flights at this point);

Friday, 1 March: actual schedule released so attendees know when their papers/panels are;

Monday, 4 March: room block opens.

We are also encouraging pre and postconferences at the university campuses in the vicinity of Washington, DC. These include Georgetown U, George Washington U, American U, Howard U, as well as other universities with campuses in DC (e.g. Johns Hopkins, Brown, Arizona State), and those nearby, such as Marymount U and George Mason U. Please advise if you need any assistance with making contact with these institutions.